


In The Tunnels Below

by That_Pyro_Fella



Series: The Kindred [1]
Category: Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Kroot, T'au, Tags Are Hard, kroot are cool, will include gue'vesa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:27:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29827011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Pyro_Fella/pseuds/That_Pyro_Fella
Summary: As the most recent shaper of his kindred, Darikh is responsible for his squad's welbeing and success. Sadly, not everything goes according to plan in this recently conquered planet.
Series: The Kindred [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2192685
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	In The Tunnels Below

**Author's Note:**

> Sure anyone that knows me is aware of how much I love tau. But one of my favourite stuff about them is being friends with a bunch of smaller races, in specific the kroot. And taking the lack of content regarding kroot (I'm looking at you GW), I decided to wrap my fingers into something small.
> 
> Have fun.

“RETREAT! RETREAT!” Darikh screamed as loud as he could in his clicks. He walked backwards, gun pointed high shooting at whatever dared to approach him.

“Ikhro is down!” Another voice was heard through the cadre-net, this one raspy and broken. Some obscene clicks were heard from the other side, followed by gunshots and a scream, too distorced to belong to a human.

Darikh felt his quills shiver and hit something behind him. Panic rose only to be dismissed quickly by the voice of Ankhro. He put himself in position, side to side with the female while she hit repeatedly the finger on the trigger, hitting over and over again the chitin shell of their enemies.

“Don’t waste unnecessary ammo.” Darikh instructed the young female. She didn’t reply, merely looking at him and nodding in answer.

He urged his young to walk faster through the corridor, never turning back to the menace. Every time they showed up, a cascade of pulse fire was brought, usually accompanied by a well placed shot from Ozarek. Usually it was strong enough to turn down the enemies but one of them always got close enough.

A hit of their guns was enough in that situation and the floor was starting to get littered with corpses. Darikh’s eyes crossed through them, his mind refusing to assess their small size and young bodies. Mangled arms covered in tough plaques, bent backs and wielding all sorts of improvised weapons.

And in the middle, kroot corpses. He could see them well, mangled in the middle of the slaughter. They had fought well until their last breath and it would be a waste to not consume them. A great shame fell upon him, not being able to give these brave warriors a proper ceremony. But there were more important tasks at hand, these being the survival of his squad and to bring information to the surface. And so they carried on.

The tunnels were getting more and more narrow, with new entrances at every meter. He clicked an order to stay alert to his team. Their enemies seemed to know these tunnels well and the chance to get caught again was high, something he wasn’t looking for. Still, minutes passed since the last attack and the mutterings were getting scarcer.

He moved his way through what was left of the team to the front, where the bulky form of Tortr made way.

“Elder, I’m caughting tau signals!” Tortr’s raspy voice spoke again. “We’re getting close to the surface but there’s sign of conflict there!”

Darikh nodded in confirmation and raised his rifle to shoot through a three armed human that managed to get too close. Even if they never stopped, these attacks were getting rarer and rarer. Were they running out of possible fodder? Darikh doubted it, he had seen the tunnels overfilling with bodies. Or were they concentrating their strengths in somewhere else? A possible retrieval team?

“Against what? These humans?”

“No.” A long pause before adding more. “Tyranids.”

Darikh didn’t reply, instead turning his attention otherside. “Kindred, remain careful. This isn’t over yet.”

***

Several hours passed through. Darikh couldn’t tell exactly how long, for time had lost all meaning underground. They just kept on walking, now feeling more relaxed once the bigger threat had passed. Once in a while they would hear footsteps and an approaching human but quickly that would be dispatched and normalcy would return. Eventually the attacks had completely subsidized, with the last hit being hours ago.

Here in this environment, Darikh could finally make sense of the losses.

They had lost more than ¾ of their starting forces, alongside the pathfinder team accompanying him and the hound pack. What started as a large scouting team to assess the situation in the underground tunnels of the recently conquered planet had quickly turned into slaughter as they moved too far into a deep complex overflowing with humans.

Humans, Darikh doubted he could call them that. These things had little to do with humans, sporting more arms than normal and with strong chitin covering their mutated bodies. Even their flesh was corrupted, leaving a strong distaste in his mouth and the urge to vomit it. He had instructed his kindred to not consume that flesh and they listened well, after experiencing its taste in first hand. Darikh had seen mutants before but these things were nothing compared to that.

At least mutants they could feed upon, even if for little.

“Ozarekh, Ankhro, Tortr and Perthro, is that all?” He muttered into the cadrenet, following the wave of confirmation. 5 members, that was all left of their kindred. And one single hound out of a full pack, the shaper confirmed glancing at Tortr who was occupied with pulling the hound closer to them.

And now, things were looking grim outside. Darikh could catch glimpses over the network of conflict going on in the surface, the leftovers of imperial troops still fighting against tau and the upcoming fleet.

He sighed deeply, his thoughts moving on to the idea of his former kindred who laid now dead, without a chance to have their souls consumed, without the chance of any proper burial or ceremony. It pained him, he was their shaper and he felt like failing them, leaving them behind. He tried to pay no attention to such thoughts, keeping his mind occupied with reaching the surface and with the flow of information coming through the channel, filling him in.

And to share the bad news of his expedition team.

“All dead?” The shas’el asked again.

“Yes, all of the pathfinder team and kroot have been lost. We’re the only ones that remain.”

Silence fell from the other side for long seconds. “Understood, return to headquarters as soon. Direct any wounded to med-bay.”

“Understood.” Darikh clicked in confirmation and closed the channel.

Soon the sound of warfare made itself heard through the walls, alongside the welcomed breeze of fresh air. And quicker than they thought, they were already at the surface, covering their eyes from the bright orange sun rays. A warrior appeared as quickly as possible, shaking dust from his red shoulder plate and guiding them through the rubble of what once was a impotent square.

It was a vast ample space, circunded by intricate archways in the typical human architecture, completed with the statue of a gue’ron’sha in the middle, raising his sword to the skies in defiance. But now little remained of it after being in the path of a crashing vehicle. The square itself was marked with serpentine tunnels excavated by the previous humans defenders and still in use by the tau, showing what little defense they could muster against the upcoming invasion.

With a pause to leave the group in the med-bay, they eventually reached the headquarters, the remains of an old imperial building with many constructions already in progress. Darikh could see where the rockrete was being replaced by far stronger materials, where all sorts of wiring and power sources were being installed and the never ending murmur of drones working.

They entered the building, crossing through rooms and rooms, each converted into operations centers from which all the planet was surveyed. And they reached the main room, a large space with all sorts of holographic screens including one large sphere at the center, something Darikh believed to be the planet.

Tau filled the space, giving little opportunity to maneuver. From hurried earth caste builders and their little helpers, still going on with the construction of the place to holographic images of air caste admirals surveying their ships’ operations to the fire caste officials sitting in thrones, chatting between them in worried tones. The room’s atmosphere was heavy with utter dedication, present through all the tau clenched expressions.

The guiding fire warrior made his presence known and suddenly, Darikh found himself at the center of the attention.

“Now introducing the kroot shaper Darikh.” The fire warrior spoke quickly before stepping backwards. Darikh only nodded in the direction of the commanders. Before he could say anything, the dark skinned commander spoke.

“You’re what’s left of the scouting cadre?”

“Yes commander.”

“Pathfinder and kroot teams.” Another commander added. Unlikely for his rank, this one was young. “They were tasked to scout the underground tunnel systems beneath the capital city.”

The first commander leaned in his chair. Darikh could clearly see the multitude of scars that brandished his skin and his dark eyes fixated on him. “What happened down there Darikh?”

The kroot gulped down. “We were tracking down any pocket of resistance left but we found ourselves in the remains of some underground city. But we were trapped by… by things that weren’t exactly humans. They striked with no mercy and caught us all in the carnage.”

“What kind of things? Can you describe them?” A stocky earth caste tau sitting on one of the thrones who appeared to be more focused on his datapad than the ongoing conversation spoke down.

Darikh tried to find the correct words. “They had three or four arms, covered in strong plaques. And their meat was tainted, corrupted.” Darikh could go over and over on the descriptions of that tainted meat but knew very well the tau weren’t fond of that habit of his kind. So it would be better to keep it short and hope the commanders understood.

The phrases stuck in the air for some uncomfortable seconds in which the commanders seemed to digest what was going on, until the earth caste member spoke again, eyes never leaving the disk in his hands.

“The Imperium refers to them as genestealers. They’re tendrils of the tyranid hive fleets, sent to a planet to wreak chaos and confusion to ease the invasion by the main fleet. They must’ve been here with the Imperium.”

“That is why our invasion came so easily. The planet was already divided by these aliens…”

“And why the hive fleet is approaching.”

Their conversation soon turned to hushed tones in between the commanders, before the high commander raised his head and dismissed the shaper.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone that guesses which sept I'm using receives a cookie.


End file.
